Chapter 6 - The Gathering Storm
Within an hour of Marcus’s extraction, we were safely secured inside our underground medical safehouse in upstate New York—a heavily fortified bunker hidden beneath an unassuming horse farm.
Dr. Vance, our trusted underground physician, had examined Grace and our newborn son (whom we named Leo, after my grandfather). Both were resting comfortably, miraculously healthy despite the unspeakable horrors Grace had endured over the past six months.
I stood in the underground bunker’s war room, staring down at a large tactical map of Manhattan and the sprawling Rossi estate displayed across a mahogany table.
Surrounding the table were five men: Marcus, captain of my personal detail; Vincent, head of our European shipping division; Salvatore, the veteran capo of the Brooklyn docks; and two intelligence analysts who had remained fiercely loyal to my father’s legacy before Elena seized control.
“The board of directors met two hours ago,” Marcus reported, tossing a stack of encrypted dossiers onto the table. “Your mother invoked Section Four of the Rossi Charter, declaring you legally incapacitated and presumed dead following an ‘unfortunate training accident’ in Europe. She has assumed absolute chairmanship of the syndicate.”
“She thinks she won,” Salvatore grunted, spitting a toothpick onto the floor. “She’s already cutting deals with the Bratva and the Colombian cartels behind our backs, expanding the drug routes through our ports without syndicate approval. The old capos are furious, but they’re too terrified of her enforcers to speak out.”
“They won’t have to speak out,” I said coldly, leaning over the table, placing my hands flat on the map. “We are going to give them a choice.”
“A choice?” Vincent raised an eyebrow. “Julian, Madame Elena controls the main armory at the estate, three hundred loyal enforcers, and the entire municipal police precinct in our district. If we march on the estate without overwhelming force, we’re walking into a slaughterhouse.”
“We aren’t going to march in blindly,” I replied, a dark, calculating smile touching my lips. “We’re going to dismantle her empire from the inside out.”
I tapped my finger on three specific locations on the map.
“Salvatore, your men take the docks. Cut off her primary revenue stream tonight. If her shipments can't dock, her new international partners will pull their funding within forty-eight hours.”
“Consider it done,” Salvatore grinned, cracking his knuckles.
“Vincent, you take the financial servers in Zurich and Geneva. Freeze every shell corporation Elena opened under my father’s name. Cut off her liquidity.”
“Already have the encryption keys,” Vincent nodded, tapping his laptop.
“And Marcus... you and I are going to pay a visit to the board of directors before tonight’s emergency gala at the Plaza Hotel.”
May you like
Marcus’s eyes lit up with predatory anticipation. “And what about Madame Elena?”
“Save her for me,” I whispered, my voice dropping an octave as I thought of Thomas’s lifeless body on the basement floor and the months of silent terror Grace had endured in that concrete cell. “I want to deliver her judgment in person.”
